The toilet block lay a few metres ahead of me, just beyond a wooden sign that read ‘Toilet’. Beside the sign, stood a man who regarded me, announced “TOILET”, pointed in the direction of the sign, and held out his hand for baksheesh.
Petra
Deep in the desert of Jordan we roamed,
In a rose tinted city named Petra, borne from stone.
Three hundred years before Christ it was built,
The Nabataeans mastered carving, the heat did nought but wilt.
Spice and silk passed through Petra to the East,
Trade was commanded by the Nabataeans, long deceased.
Earthquakes shook the city, and people fled
But stone refused surrender, and the city remained unbent. Continue reading Petra>>
Amman and the Dead Sea
Heavy water rolled gently towards my toes, over thick layers of caked salt, like rock candy, which had sunk to the seafloor. I stepped gingerly forward, avoiding the sharp edges of broken salt, and the water got quickly deeper, along a slip sliding slope. Soon, I was in disorienting suspension, legs kicking the air, laughing at my own attempts to swim.
Israel was across the water; its dry, sinuous hills rose quickly past brown gravel beaches, identical to the small, Jordanian owned stretch of equally course sand behind me, where Claire lazed beneath a hexagonal wooden umbrella, with only her legs extending into the weak winter sun. The Dead Sea was Yam ha-Mavet there and al-Bahr al-Mayyit here; the Hebrew and Arabic words for death also resembled each other closely. Continue reading Amman and the Dead Sea>>
Damascus: Part II
It was a crisp, cool morning, and Star Crossed Lovers café – where we had drunk our last chai the night before – was already awake. Wooden tree stumps were laid out in the spreading sunlight and the café’s dwarfish owner, wild curls on his balding head, noticed us immediately.
“Good morning!” he called, bustling about the café’s matchbox sized kitchen. “You take chai?” he offered, smiling at us.
“Well…” I looked at Iain. “We’re on our way to see Umayyad mosque,” I told the man, with purpose. He didn’t consider this an answer.
“No charge!” he said, his grin growing.
To refuse an offer of tea in Syria is considered strange, and decidedly antisocial.
“Well… we’ve got time for some chai Iain, don’t we?” Continue reading Damascus: Part II>>
Damascus: Part I
Sharia ath-Thawra was a jumble of shining yellow taxis, fearlessly zipping between moving metal. Their drivers rested weary elbows on horns, hooting, blind to all but their destination. A pedestrian flyover was visible in the distance, beyond a mammoth neon Sony sign, about a ten minute walk away. But Iain and I had slept too late; we had things to see, a city to explore, and so stood, peering onto the street, waiting for a gap. A truck chugged along further down – at a safe speed, it seemed. We took the chance, darted across the road, and began a sprint as one of the faceless yellow vehicles sped toward us, its horn hooting profanities. A leap forward and we were out of its path, balancing on a white line. Cars swished behind and in front of us, displacing bulks of air that slapped you in the face; ‘idiot’ they screamed. I exhaled, stood jelly legged in between the two rows of speeding traffic, and clutched Iain’s hand in terrified futility.
Across the road, vegetables were laid out on pieces of sacking, spread over the bare tarmac. Women sat in front of a few shrivelled vegetables, headscarves hanging over their foreheads as they stared at me, blank. Hundreds of people manned a makeshift market place that curved along the pavements and led to a wider avenue of street sellers. Arranged before them, on tables or the street, were bundles of shoelaces, polyester socks, flimsy plastic toys or seed bars: a handful of meagre items formed their livelihood. Men squeezed lemon juice into yellowed glasses and water was doused onto tired cucumber slices, refreshing their chance of purchase. All around me, people stood or sat, hoping to make a sale, and a living. Continue reading Damascus: Part I>>
